The following relates generally to wireless communication, and more specifically to beam refinement for millimeter wave (mmW) systems.
Wireless communications systems are widely deployed to provide various types of communication content such as voice, video, packet data, messaging, broadcast, and so on. These systems may be capable of supporting communication with multiple users by sharing the available system resources (e.g., time, frequency, and power). Examples of such multiple-access systems include code division multiple access (CDMA) systems, time division multiple access (TDMA) systems, frequency division multiple access (FDMA) systems, and orthogonal frequency division multiple access (OFDMA) systems, (e.g., a Long Term Evolution (LTE) system, or a New Radio (NR) system). A wireless multiple-access communications system may include a number of base stations or access network nodes, each simultaneously supporting communication for multiple communication devices, which may be otherwise known as user equipment (UE).
In a mmW system, a base station and a UE may communicate via one or more directional beams. A transmitter (e.g. a base station) may engage in a beam sweeping operating to establish an active beam pair with a receiver (e.g., a UE). An active beam pair may include an active transmit beam of the transmitter and a corresponding active receive beam of the receiver. The transmit beams and the receive beams in an active beam pair may be refined through, for example, beam refinement procedures. However, such beam refinement procedures may require multiple transmissions that each include multiple training symbols. Thus, the UE may remain in an awake mode expending power receiving and/or transmitting the multiple beam refinement transmissions, and the base station and UE may unnecessarily utilize resources during the refinement process, resulting in less than optimal efficiency.